I never noticed anything regarding optimization, at least for the last years. Well I don't play all games that come out, I don't benchmark either. I only play games I really like, even when sometimes I'd like to stay away from everything EeeeAaaaa related.

typically game developers write their code as simple as possible, using a straighforward approach.

now AMD or NVIDA come in and tell them "if you do this calculation differently, it will run faster on all gpus, here take this piece of code", or ".. it will run faster on _our_ gpus".

Even if the developers don't listen, AMD/NVIDIA driver programmers can override shaders in the graphics driver. Basically the driver looks for a specific shader code that the game sends to the graphics card and replaces it with a highly optimized version that runs faster. Both companies have been doing that for years now, and both promise it will not affect image quality. You still could imagine replacing the shader with one that is a bit simpler, not as nice looking, but running much faster.

People need to stop being dicks about this. What AMD are doing now is what they should have been doing more of during the TWIMTBP years. Finally they understand the importance of snagging top titles. Funny thing is, it doesn't mean Nvidia cards won't work - just that AMD cards should work smoothly from release.

Though the most played game I will play for the next two years will be Battlefield 4 like I have for 3. At the first glance I saw this I was thinking of dumping by GTX 780 on my next build for a 7970, but I am tired of using AMD. I have been since I first started out on computers.

This is going to be the case with almost every single PC game that's being developed in parallel on PS4 / XBOXGoHome. Even the titles that aren't under an explicit agreement with AMD or co-developed / marketed with them, everything will be much more heavily optimised for AMD's graphics architecture than NVIDIA's, and to a lesser extent their CPU architecture over Intel's ... this is a big reversal for AMD, as for years it's been the opposite on both counts.

It would be fitting if AMD cheated the way Nvidia does to really piss them off, but make no mistake that they would be attacked relentlessly for such behavior.

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This is the internet. Nothing is relentless except cat-based memes and Chuck Norris.

If the majority of people can't even remember/easily forgave that AMD attempted to hoodwink both the client and enterprise sectors with a fictitious CPU and its supposed benchmarks, what chance has an EA (ugh!) game whose lifespan is determined by when the next pretty game arrives got of being a long-lived talking point?